HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.

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ACTIVE MISSIONS
   AstroSat    BurstCube
   CALET    Chandra
   Fermi    HXMT-Insight
   INTEGRAL    IXPE
   MAXI    NICER
   NuSTAR    SRG  eROSITA
   /ART-XC
   Swift    XMM-Newton
   XRISM    
PAST MISSIONS
   AGILE    ANS
   ARIEL V    ASCA
   BBXRT    BeppoSAX
   CGRO    COPERNICUS
   COS-B    DXS
   EINSTEIN    EUVE
   EXOSAT    GINGA
   GRANAT    HaloSat
   HAKUCHO    HEAO-1
   HEAO-3    HETE-2
   Hitomi    OSO-7
   OSO-8    ROSAT
   Rossi XTE    SAS-2
   SAS-3    Suzaku
   TENMA    UHURU
   VELA 5B     WASS
   XQC    

Swift

artist conception of swift in space

Swift is a NASA medium sized explorer mission, developed in collaboration with UK and Italy. It was successfully launched on November 20, 2004 from Cape Canaveral (USA). The primary scientific objectives are to determine the origin of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) and to pioneer their use as probes of the early universe. Swift is a multiwavelegth observatory carrying three instruments: the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT; Gamma Ray), the X-ray Telescope (XRT) and the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT).

The Swift key characteristics are the rapid response to newly detected GRB and rapid data dissemination. As soon as the BAT discovers a new GRB, Swift rapidly relays its 1-4 arcmin position estimate to the ground and triggers an autonoumos spacecraft slew to bring the burst within the field of view of XRT and UVOT to follow-up the afterglow.

Swift is expected to provide redshifts for the bursts and multi-wavelength lightcurves for the duration of the afterglow. The BAT will also perform a high sensitivity hard X-ray sky survey.


Mission Characteristics

* Lifetime : 20 November 2004 (2-year nominal mission).
* Energy Range : 0.2 - 150 keV plus UV/Optical telescope (170-650 nm).
* Special Features : Autonomous spacecraft response to GRB. Accurate position estimates within minutes. Multiwavelength observations.
* Payload :
  • Burst Alert Telescope (BAT; 15-150 keV)
    Wide field-of-view coded-aperture imager. Eff. area 5240 cm2, FOV 1.4 sr half coded, ~4 arcmin position accuracy.
  • X-Ray Telescope (XRT; 0.2-10.0 keV)
    CCD Imaging spectrometer. Eff. area 110 cm2 @ 1.5 keV, FOV 23.6´ X 23.6´, ~5 arcsec position accuracy
  • UV/Optical Telescope (UVOT; 170-650 nm)
    Modified Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with image-intensified CCD detector. 6 color filters and 2 grism, FOV 17´ X 17´, 0.3 arcsec position accuracy.
* Archive : HEASARC hosts the Catalogs, Lightcurve , Spectra and Raw data.
[Swift Science Center]
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Page authors: Lorella Angelini Jesse Allen
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Last modified: Thursday, 24-Sep-2020 17:37:05 EDT

HEASARC Staff Scientist Position - Applications are now being accepted for a Staff Scientist with significant experience and interest in the technical aspects of astrophysics research, to work in the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, MD. Refer to the AAS Job register for full details.